Yiyun Li: The fetalistic Chinese writer – #BlogchatterA2Z

Born in November of 1972, Yiyun Li is a Chinese American writer who writes in English. After completing her graduation from Peking University in 1996, she moved to US and in 2000 earned her MS in immunology from University of Iowa. She took a turn towards creative writing by 2005 after completing her MFA degrees from the same university. Her short stories and essays have been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Zoetrope: All-Story. A couple of stories from her first story collection ‘A Thousand Years of Good Prayers’ have been adapted by director Wayne Wang in to films.

Photograph by the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

Her latest story collection Gold boy, Emerald Girl is what I wish to include in my TBR. As the blurb of book says, stories are set in 21st century China where economic development has led to new situations unknown to previous decades: residents in a shabby apartment building witnessing in awe the real estate boom; a local entrepreneur-turned-philanthropist sheltering women in trouble in her mansion; a group of retired women discovering fame late in their lives as private investigators specialising in extramarital affairs; a young woman setting up a blog to publicise the alleged affair of her father.

Knowing anything about Chinese people and the country at large is difficult for any outsider because of their two face policy. Though she believes that her Chineseness, her stripped-back style and intensity of creating fetalistic characters sets her apart from other western writers. She strongly believes that explaining China is not her job as we never expect American writer to represent America or British writer to represent Britain; writers like Yiyun Li comes to aid in understanding the China and Chinese society. Her books has been translated in dozens of languages though she has turned down all the offers of translating it into Mandarin as she thinks her country is “not ready” for what she has to say.